Rhône negociant house Guigal has confirmed it is planning to bottle a new single-vineyard Côte-Rôtie.
The wine, made from pure Syrah, will be called La Reynarde. It is named after Le Reynard, the stream that runs between lieux-dits Côte Brune and Côte Blonde. The word is feminised to ‘La Reynarde’ to stay within the family of single vineyard Côte-Rôties commonly known as ‘the LaLas’.
Guigal currently makes three – La Mouline, La Turque and La Landonne – which are among the most sought-after and highly-priced wines of the Rhône Valley.
The fruit for La Reynarde will come from a parcel in lieu-dit Fongeant, between vineyards owned by Jean-Paul Jamet and Jean-Luc Jamet.
The parcel was cleared for planting and vineyard construction in 2010, which took five years. The first vines were planted in 2015, and the parcel will come into full production from the 2022 vintage.
MD Philippe Guigal said he would wait for a ‘great vintage’ before they start bottling.
If the first vintage is the 2022, and it undergoes the same barrel maturation as their other single-vineyard Côte-Rôties (40 months in new oak barriques), it will be available commercially from 2026 at the earliest.
Of the other La-Las, Guigal said: ‘We have La Mouline – the vineyard my grandfather dreamed of from the age of 14 – which we purchased in time for the 1966 vintage.
‘La Landonne was physically planted by my father in January 1975 to celebrate my birth. To a certain extent therefore we see this as ‘my cuvée’ which we produced for the first time in 1978. A few years later, my father Marcel revived the vineyard of La Turque which was in production before 1935, and again from 1985. So we’re a family of three generations, with three La-Las.’
La Reynarde is a tribute to Philippe Guigal’s twin sons Charles et Etienne. They were born in 2010, the same year that the parcel was cleared for planting.
